A voltage converter generates a regulated output voltage based on an input voltage. The output voltage can be used to a power a load. A buck converter is a type of voltage converter. A buck converter includes a pair of power transistors (or a diode can be substituted for one of the power transistors) that are toggled on and off by a pulse width modulation (PWM) controller. An inductor is connected to the power transistors and an output capacitor is connected to the inductor.
In today's computing environment, central processing units (CPUs), field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), application specific integrated circuits (ASICs) and even peripherals are growing increasingly complex and, in turn, so do their power delivery requirements. To handle the higher demands, multiphase voltage regulators are becoming increasingly common in many areas of computing including laptops, tablets, servers, etc. A multiphase buck regulator includes a parallel set of buck power stages, each stage with its own pair of power transistors and inductor. Collectively, these components are referred to as a “phase.” These phases are connected in parallel and share the output capacitor. The phases are operated by a controller in such a way that while one phase is active, the other phase(s) is inactive.